


Form and Function

by RootsOfOurRemiges



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Character Study, From Both Directions, Gay Male Character, M/M, The Author's Many Thoughts™ On The Supposed Body/Soul Dichotomy, religious homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-20
Updated: 2021-01-20
Packaged: 2021-03-18 12:07:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28866750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RootsOfOurRemiges/pseuds/RootsOfOurRemiges
Summary: All along, these material, corporeal things; they were built to love one another.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Kudos: 18





	Form and Function

To their respective colleagues in Heaven and Hell, the human body was a commute. It was the impersonal hotel suite paid for by the company credit card, furnished with uninspired stock paintings and sensibly efficient chairs that discouraged being sat in for too long.

To Aziraphale and to Crowley, the human body was _home,_ just as much as the earth on which they stood.

It was the sort of home that began as a rental property, with its endless cascade of terms and conditions in the lease and a dreadfully strict landlord. Angels weren’t _meant_ to experience the great sensory tapestry of humanity after all, being so far above and so much _better_ than all that song and dance, food and drink, poetry and prose, you see. And demons weren’t much better off — trafficking in indulgence and peddling sins of excess in exchange for souls was a rather more dry and bureaucratic affair than one might expect, where any experiences of the flesh saw their personal significance promptly converted to a lengthy decimal to be swallowed up by the pivot tables and laminated presentation sheets of their infernal performance reviews. Another lifeless number measuring interchangeable souls only by their proximity to damnation.

In either case, the demands of _professional distance_ saw angels and demons alike issued their vessels and an impersonal briefing on the powers and limitations that distanced them from humanity. Such simple creatures as humans were, eternal beings needn’t share any real _commonality_ with them to do their jobs, of course. Merely herd them in the appropriate upward or downward direction, preferably having as little to do with their strange complicated bodies and inscrutable lifestyles as possible.

It took Aziraphale over 200 years on Earth to fully grasp that he had a tongue tuned to appreciating flavors, and a stomach that could be filled to contentment. And it sparked a certain deja vu when he finally did, just _something_ that resonated about the pomegranate offered to him from the farmer’s outstretched hand, stirrings of familiarity and a new understanding. The revelation that was his first taste was equal parts wonder and heartache at all he had missed up until then. What else might have passed him by?

It likewise caught Crowley squarely off-guard the first time humanity moved him through art. Melodies of songs lodging themselves in his corporeal memory long after he heard them, satirical theatre doubling him over with laughter, one Greek tragedy too many driving him to drunkenly renounce all stories without happy endings — there was so much more to these experiences than the supposedly small ideas of _simple_ creatures.

He shared that thought with Aziraphale once, who paused mid-oyster to agree with an indulgent sigh, and wonder aloud if the body itself was their anchor to that which would otherwise bounce off an occult or ethereal consciousness. An understanding of music captured in a tapping foot, memories and bonds in the flavors of a meal, and perhaps, well…

Well.

Things were never going to be reducible to mere intellectual musings where sex was concerned.

Angels being too wrapped up in loftiness for anything but judging and reproving humanity from afar, and demons having long since hollowed out any desires of their own so as not to influence their work, neither faction had a particular affinity for it.

In the eyes of angels in particular, any evidence of a physical sex beyond the barest necessities of blending in among the population was at best vestigial, and likewise best regarded the way humans regard the appendix: largely not at all, ideally forgetting it exists altogether unless something goes terribly wrong.

And by Heaven’s standards at least, “terribly wrong” meant any number of things. The circumstances that had led to the existence of nephilim were one such instance, and Aziraphale found some relief in the knowledge that he’d neither _had_ nor _wanted_ any part in that. He’d come to understand his own awakening desires were rather different, that his own male body sought not its opposite, but its equivalent. That he craved the touch of men and not women wouldn’t grant him any quarter from Heaven of course, and the horrors of judgment leveled by angels and humans in their name alike told him as much in vivid, burning clarity.

He spent long nights lost in thought on the matter. By day, he was inclined to contentment with himself and his desires of the flesh, if wary of being found out by his superiors. But it was that wariness and the resulting sleeplessness that gave him many extra hours to contemplate, dither, and when things really seemed discouraging, even _fret_. He wondered sometimes if his own earthly body had forsaken him, if with every step closer it brought him to the human experiences of knowledge and pleasure, perhaps he was witnessing the gradual erosion of his own divinity.

Crowley had his own doubts and questions to grapple with in the meantime, finding no comfort in Hell’s comparative apathy toward the particulars of sex.

It had never been his domain as temptations went — he was vastly more at ease sowing vices like contrarian pedantry, skiving off responsibilities, and general nuisances. Seeing half of humanity made to suffer in the name of sex as collective retribution for his first temptation in the Garden had rather soured him on lust as _any_ sort of catalyst for demonic gain.

The other matter that further tangled the whole matted snarl of complications was that Hell didn’t much care for distinguishing between _genuine_ evil and things that were simply an arbitrary thorn in the side of Heaven.

No, even the hypothetical thought of his colleagues _congratulating_ him for what they'd perceive as seducing men towards damnation turned Crowley's stomach, so he kept his burgeoning private thoughts of broad shoulders and subtle colognes close to the vest, a precious secret that Hell couldn’t ever corrupt so long as they didn’t know. He played out in theory what he didn’t dare put into practice, dreaming not just of passions, but acts of love.

And the more he coveted that ideal, the less he understood of his side’s — _either_ side’s — purpose in making the body the enemy of the soul.

Weren’t the two really the same thing at the heart of it all?

For him and Aziraphale both, that persistent doubt would linger for six thousand years. Aziraphale loved men joyously but furtively, from what small alcoves of sanctuary he could find to share in his secret, arm-in-arm with other such simple freedoms as being the first and only angel that would ever learn to dance.

He never told Crowley outright, but Crowley knew, and the vicarious catharsis of simply _knowing_ those moments of unfettered humanity were possible almost made up for what Crowley hesitated to seek himself.

The thrill they each felt at the sight of _one another_ remained likewise unspoken, but implicitly understood. A fond antagonistic respect for one another had been easy. Friendship had been... fraught, at first, but they took to it like ducks to water and soon forgot being anything else. Even the powerful sense of devotion, of expecting and counting on the other's presence, that too was beginning to feel normal. No, it was the attraction that left both angel and demon alike feeling hyperaware and unusually self-conscious about this unprecedented territory they occupied with one another. 

How could they possibly explain it?

What were the chances?

The ending had to be wholly rewritten, made anew into a beginning, before either could have what they truly wanted.

To finally be rightly bare before the other and affirm what was now true beyond doubt: for all the fragility and imperfection of the human body, it was the medium through which their love moved and took shape. _Being_ men and _loving_ men was written into the atoms of their very forms, and that fact had weathered them through every resulting hardship, and brought them to one another, seen them through to freedom. To do as their former colleagues so often did, trading in models on a whim, would have been akin to ripping up their very roots, and they’d seen too many like them forcibly cast from their homes as it was, to even entertain the possibility was long since out of the question.

To love one another was to remain just as they were, and wear themselves with persistent and unyielding pride for as long as this world would have them. And though it was their immortal origins that contributed the longevity, that resilience was humanity at its core.


End file.
